HOW DID YOU GET OVER YOUR SEXUAL ABUSE

Dr. Cristie Jo Johnston: How did you get over your sexual abuse? Because many people like the nones that are listening to this documentary right now – many of them perhaps have been sexually abused. They are looking for ways to recover.

Dr. Richard Dawkins: There’s a spectrum of sexual abuse and this is my point. The abuse that I endured was negligible compared to what some people endure at the hands of maybe a family member. There’s awful stories of fathers or uncles saying, ‘This is our little secret between us,’ and day after day, night after night, week after week abusing them. It’s very, very difficult to get over that kind of thing. But if it’s just a very small incident as it was in my case, I got over it. You’re asking me how I got over it. I went and talked to my friends about it and they said, ‘Oh yes, that happened to me too.’ And a little bit later, the teacher concerned committed suicide.

Atheist Richards Dawkins’ upbringing was typical Anglican, he was confirmed and believed in God until his mid-teens when, having read about Darwin’s theory of evolution.